


Alter Egos

by philophrosynae



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: Humor, M/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-10
Updated: 2020-08-10
Packaged: 2021-03-06 03:55:12
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,619
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25827022
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/philophrosynae/pseuds/philophrosynae
Summary: Prompt: Superhero roommatesAlfred and Ivan get along as roommates because they both value privacy. That was until Alfred did something very "Alfred" and it all went sideways in a hurry.
Relationships: America/Russia (Hetalia)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 69





	Alter Egos

**Author's Note:**

> I forgot I wrote this! When I found it in my files it made me laugh so here it is. Thought I'd post something easy to take a break from some of the other fics in my files. 
> 
> Hoping to post some more chapters of Fluoride and two more one shots (including Sun Tea) soon.

Ivan let his messenger bag slip off his shoulder with a thunk and fell face-first into the sofa. His roommate was already home, he could hear him singing loudly in the shower. Knowing Alfred, Ivan had a feeling he wouldn’t quiet down even if he knew he wasn’t alone. Others might find it annoying, truthfully Ivan used to find it obnoxious himself, but after a few months the other man’s infectious enthusiasm had become endearing. In fact, Ivan was even willing to admit that he had a crush on him, but a horrible anxiety-cocktail of expected rejection and a fear of intimacy had him refusing to act on his desires. 

Alfred was chatty, but he wasn’t nearly as nosey as the other people Ivan used to live with. Privacy was his ultimate concern and, thankfully, Alfred hadn’t pried when Ivan said he had odd hours and that he _really_ didn’t like people touching him. No hugs, no causal pats on the back, not even an accidental bump in the hall. No touching. Ivan’s official excuse was that he had a skin condition. 

Conveniently, Alfred kept equally odd hours and prefered roommates who didn’t want to hang out at all hours of the night. He would slip in and out of the apartment to go to class or his part time job, waving cheerfully if he saw Ivan on his way out, but otherwise leaving without a word. For the past few months that they had been living together the arrangement had worked quite well. 

To him, Ivan was just another medical student with bad sleeping habits and bad-er fashion sense. 

Ivan lifted his head when he heard the water stop and the bathroom door open. Alfred didn’t exit, but stuck his hand out the door for a _welcome home_ wave. 

“Want me to order takeout?” Ivan said.

“Yes, please!” Alfred’s voice echoed slightly in the bathroom. “Are we getting Chinese or pizza?”

“It’s Tuesday so pizza is cheaper.”

“Double pepperoni for me then! I’ll pay, I have cash.”

Ivan hummed in acknowledgement and pressed his chin back into the pillows as he dug around in his pocket for his phone. He was trying not to think of the fact that his roommate was naked. He had brought up the food as an excuse to keep his mind busy. Calling the pizza place sounded like too much work, so he tugged off one of his ever-present gloves and swiped through the various take-out apps to see who had the best deals for the day. 

It wasn’t particularly cold, but he always wore gloves when he left the apartment. It was too noisy otherwise. The subway would be absolute hell without them, let alone his job at the library. He had a small collection, some wool and some leather. Some were fingerless, some were not, and others were cute mittens with designs that he could wear only in winter. They matched his scarves, hats, long sleeved shirts, and jeans. The scarves were regularly pulled up over his mouth and nose if he didn’t have a mask handy. Ivan wouldn’t even wear sandals if he could help it. 

Because that was his _thing_. When he was a child, he hadn’t known he was unusual. It seemed only natural that he could hear his sisters’ thoughts when he held their hands or that he would listen in to his mother’s worries when she brushed his hair. His ability to complete his sisters’ sentences was excused as them just being close siblings. School taught him otherwise. 

He was separated from the others once they realized what he could do. Even actual _learning_ had to be done alone, the teachers didn’t trust him not to cheat by reading the answers from someone else. It didn’t matter that his schoolmates were too frightened to touch him. And it didn’t matter that his sisters no longer held his hands.

Who would want to touch a person who could hear every one of their dirty little secrets? 

But Ivan never told them he could send his own thoughts in reverse. “Nudges,” he called them. Soft ideas dropped behind with a kiss or a handshake that would, with a little luck, move the other person’s mind. They had no way of knowing it was someone else’s idea in their head that struck at the perfect moment.

He did his best to use it for good. That’s why he had moved to the city where other people with odd abilities were more common. Some of them were loud, others were strong, and most of them called themselves heros. It was through the blessing of private internet chat groups that Ivan learned he wasn’t the only one who preferred to use his powers anonymously. He mostly lurked when it came to these forums, but knowing he wasn’t completely alien had made life a lot more bearable. No one knew who he was or what he did, but he took comfort in the fact that a little positive thinking could prevent someone else’s bad decision. 

He looked back at his phone where a cute car animation was telling him their food was only ten minutes away. 

“Alfred! Are you still in the bathroom?”

A cough from behind the still partially opened door told him he was right. 

“I’ll be out in a sec. Did you need the cash? You can just grab it from my wallet, it’s on the counter.”

Ivan blushed, that was a new one. Their apartment was practically split down the middle. Ivan’s dishes and Alfred’s dishes. Ivan’s bookshelves and Alfred’s bookshelves. Ivan’s space heater and Alfred’s fans. The only thing they really shared was the living room furniture and the TV. Going through his roommate’s wallet wasn’t something Ivan normally did. 

“...are you sure?” Ivan asked.

“Yeah! It’s…It’s fine.”

Alfred sounded tired, his voice strained. Something was wrong, but the problem could be anything, really. Ivan didn’t know him well enough to guess the reason, they certainly weren’t close enough to share schedules. Maybe Alfred had finals or he had gotten in trouble at work. Or maybe even family issues, Ivan had met his twin brother when he had helped Alfred move in. 

Ivan rolled off the sofa, catching his stray glove before it fell. He shouldn’t ask. At least that’s what the small voice in the back of his mind said. If it were him, he wouldn’t want Alfred asking. His problems were often too hard to explain without unraveling his entire life story. He walked into the cramped kitchen and the wallet was exactly where Alfred said it would be located, flipped open with a Captain America shield stamped into the cheap leather. 

All of their ice trays sat empty beside it. 

He bit his tongue before he said anything else. Ivan took in a deep breath and looked around the rest of the room. Alfred’s favorite leather jacket had been thrown haphazardly across the kitchen table. The first aid kit had been dug out of the back of the cabinets, its contents strewn across the countertop. Ivan sighed deeply when he noticed the dishtowels were all missing. 

He took off his other glove and lay them both on top of Alfred’s jacket. He left the wallet untouched. 

As walked back across the kitchen and through the living room to the hallway in front of their shared bathroom, he wondered to himself if Alfred knew he thought of him as a friend. 

“Alfred?” he asked softly. 

He heard the dull thud of a towel-wrapped bag of ice being dropped to the tile floor followed by the clattering of many small bottles falling after it. 

“Um, hey?”

Ivan chewed idly at his lower lip, his bare hand braced on the doorframe. Alfred had pulled back behind the door so that Ivan couldn’t see him. 

“Are you hurt?”

“I just,” Alfred trailed off. “I just hurt my arm. I’ll be fine.”

“Let me help,” Ivan said, swallowing hard to keep his nerves out of his voice. 

He heard Alfred sigh loudly. Ivan noticed the bandages on the floor right as Alfred’s face blocked his field of vision. He had decided to peek around the edge of the door to frown at Ivan. Even with only part of his face visible, Ivan could see he had the beginnings of a black eye. Alfred squinted at him, then looked at Ivan’s hand.

“Where are your gloves?”

“Where are your glasses?”

“That’s not an answer…”

“You first.”

“Broken. I have a spare pair but I can’t find them.”

Alfred looked down, but not before Ivan could see the frustrated tears welling in his eyes. 

“Oh, kroshka…”

“What?” Alfred looked back up at him in confusion.

Ivan took the opportunity to touch his hand to the man’s face, ostensibly to brush his damp bangs out his face.

_Oh, he’s going to think I’m really lame. So lame. How do I tell him about the cab anyway?_

Ivan yanked back his hand in shock.

“You ripped the _door_ off a cab?” Ivan shouted. 

“It was an- what?! What the fuck? How did you-”

Alfred reached out to snatch Ivan’s hand back but he had already bolted out of the hall back to the kitchen. His plan was to grab his gloves, grab his bag, and run. He didn’t know where his keys were but he could leave them behind. He had only wanted to find out if Alfred was alright, he hadn’t meant to pry, and he certainly hadn’t meant to blurt it out. But now he needed to _leave_. Anything else would have worked. 

_“Let’s get the advil.”_

_“My gloves are on the table.”_

_“Hey, the pizza is almost here.”_

Why did he say what he did? 

Right as he made it to the door, Alfred lunged into him and tackled him to the ground. Ivan flailed his arms to grab something to knock the other man off, but a horrible _crunch_ to his left made him pause. 

“Shit,” Alfred wheezed above him. “I’m so so so sorry, that was an accident too. I didn’t think I could, oh God. Why do I keep doing that?”

Ivan tried to keep his breathing even to focus his own thoughts through Alfred’s babbling in his ears and against his skin. Right beside his head, Alfred’s clenched fist had punched through the tile floor. 

_He wasn’t there, I know he wasn’t there. So how would he… Can he read my mind? No, that’s stupid. Wait, maybe it isn’t stupid? Is he reading my mind right now? Oh my God, stop! No, no, no. It was an accident I swear I -_

Ivan looked ahead of him at the gap between the front door and the floor, a change in the light catching his eye. The doorbell ringing followed by three short knocks explained the shadow ahead of him.

“Pizza,” he said weakly. 

When Alfred didn’t move or otherwise register what he said, Ivan pressed a hand to Alfred’s cheek and repeated the same word through thought. That had the desired effect as Alfred rolled off him with a nervous squeak.

“Oh! I didn’t mean to tackle you, honest! I just wanted to grab you and… Oh, why do I keep breaking things?”

Alfred’s hair was still damp from the shower but he had at least thought to put on shorts. In addition to the black eye, Ivan could see sloppily applied bandages to his arm and torso. The doorbell rang again and Ivan moved his hand to press his finger gently to Alfred’s lips in a shushing gesture. 

“Sit on the sofa. I’ll get the door.”

He watched the other run back to the sofa and cover his face with the throw blanket. Alfred’s thoughts had been disjointed, but Ivan had still managed to get an idea of what had happened. 

Alfred had ripped the door off a cab when trying to open it after arguing with his boss. The driver was confused and furious and had run out to punch Alfred in the face. Normally the driver wouldn’t have lasted much longer, but Alfred had frozen, gaping like a fish at the shredded metal in his hand. Something had turned his miraculous super strength back _off_ however, and the door he had been holding aloft suddenly dragged him back down to the ground. It seemed like the driver had managed a kick to Alfred’s ribs before he had rolled away and run home in a panic. Ivan sighed and wondered if Alfred would let him help redo the bandages. 

When Ivan answered the door, he awkwardly stood over the hole in the floor, praying the delivery person wouldn’t notice. Thankfully, Alfred hadn’t punched down through the ceiling of the apartment below. Three deliciously warm boxes were handed to him in exchange for a few bills. He waved away the change for an extra tip and walked back to the front of the sofa.

Alfred had managed to cover himself entirely with the blanket, but Ivan could still tell from the outline that he was slumped over his knees in a pout. He waved the pizza boxes in front of Alfred’s nose. 

“Let’s eat before it gets cold,” he said.

His only response was a jerking gasp and an aborted sob. Ivan shifted awkwardly on his feet and frowned at the food in his hands, unsure of what else he could do to fix the situation. After a few awkward seconds of silence, Alfred finally broke down in tears. 

That made his decision for him. Ivan’s body ached from having been slammed to the ground, but he knelt down in front of the sofa as slowly as he could. He set the pizza boxes down on the table behind him before turning back to Alfred. 

“I won’t be able to hear you through the fabric, okay?” he said before placing his hands on Alfred’s knees. 

Alfred flinched slightly, but didn’t pull away. Instead, Ivan could see the blanket move as Alfred wiped his face with his palms. He sighed softly to himself, thankful that Alfred had understood what he had meant.

“...are you going to make me move out?” Alfred asked quietly. 

“No.”

“The last people did.”

“This happened before?”

“Picked up the sofa when I was drunk. That’s why I don’t drink anymore.”

Ivan bit his lip again, slightly amused by the mental image, He had been only half honest when he said he couldn’t hear through the fabric. He couldn’t hear _thoughts_ but he could catch the outlines of Alfred’s emotions. Alfred was partially embarrassed, but mostly terrified. Ivan wasn’t entirely sure why. 

“You can’t control it?” Ivan asked.

“I’m trying… When I get really mad or upset I lose it.”

Ivan snorted. 

“Like the Hulk?”

“No! I don’t turn green! I just… forget to go gentle when I’m frustrated. I get hot.”

“Ah.”

“Is it scary?” Alfred asked. “I try really hard not to do it but…”

“No, you’re still Alfred,” he said.

And it was true. Ivan was far beyond the point of worrying about people’s quirks. Being able to lift a car wasn’t the worst surprise Alfred could have given him. The blanket in front of him shifted slightly as Alfred’s shoulders slumped in relief. 

“Are you frightened of _me_?” Ivan asked. 

Alfred sighed and shifted on the sofa, pulling away from Ivan’s grasp. He let the blanket fall off his head onto his lap. He squinted at Ivan, his vision blurry from his quickly swelling eye and lack of glasses. Gingerly, he reached out and touched Ivan’s cheek with one of his hands. 

_No, you’re still Ivan,_ he thought.

And Ivan wasn’t sure whose happy relief he felt more.


End file.
